orchestra21

The blog of conductor Jason Weinberger

A passage from the last movement of Symphonie Fantastique, re-orchestrated two different ways by legendary Philadelphia Orchestra conductors Leopold Stokoski [top images] and Eugene Ormandy. In addition to offering a window onto twentieth-century orchestral performance practice, the emendations demonstrate the degree to which this particular work by Berlioz has consistently attracted idiosyncratic – and often interventionist – interpretations. Our reading at the WCFSO on Saturday will, in healthy twenty first-century fashion, stay truer to the post-classical spirit of the piece.

[Scans from the Penn Library exhibition Hidden in Plain Sight]